Portraying the Literacy of Palmyra. The Evidence of Funerary Sculpture and its Interpretation

Next to Edessa, Palmyra was the only example of a city in the Roman Syria where the local Aramaic dialect has never gone out of use, nor has it been displaced in inscriptions. The epigraphic material from Palmyra consists in fact of a large corpus of inscriptions. Interestingly, most of them are associated with local sepulchral art. They were typically placed on the limestone slabs decorated in high relief by portraits of the deceased citizens, usually in a form of bust, rarely a figure or stele. Approximately 145 such sculptures were taken into consideration. The Palmyrenians on these funerary portraits are often depicted with the writing attributes, such as roll and capsa, the wide and narrow tablets, poliptych and codex, schedula, double schedula, stylus, and also keys. The question arises, what meanings did these figural tombstone decorations with such attributes originally expressed? In this study the author investigates the private, sepulchral character of Palmyrene portraits, their iconographic message, their local archaeological context and epigraphic (often bilingual) data. As a result four types of symbolical representations could be distinguished: (I) Schoolboys and Students; (II) Citizens of Greek Polis and of the Roman Empire; (III) Entrepreneurs (merchants, administrators, camel drivers and meharistes); (IV) Mourners (Tomb Owners and Priests). The Palmyrene funerary busts supply an outstanding documentation of noticeable use of writing tools in the Roman East. The abundant number of funerary representations with writing attributes implies a degree of statistical importance. The broad representation of writing attributes in funerary sculpture of Palmyra provides new arguments in the discussion on the literacy in the Ancient World, or at least in the Roman Syria. Funerary reliefs examined in this study are mostly depictions of commoners who represent middle and lower strata of the Roman provincial society. Consequently, it seems that the ability to use Aramaic and Greek alphabets was not uncommon. What is more, the ability to read and write in both languages was probably fairly widespread throughout the territory of the Roman Syria.